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Reflection on Language Awareness and the Meaning of Grammar Question 1. Write an essay that includes all of these elements: · Are you confident in your grammar skills? How did you learn grammar? Do you know a second language? If so, what did learning it teach you about language structure? · Were there any surprises that you encountered in this module? Could you answer the grammar assessment quiz questions correctly? Were you already familiar with most of the terms, such as noun, direct object, auxiliary verb, relative clause, and passive voice? If so, how will this knowledge support your teaching? If not, what are your plans to strengthen these areas? · What is your attitude toward grammar teaching? Is it stimulating, challenging, boring, or all part of the job? If you have worked with students before, explain how they seemed to feel about learning grammar. From what you know now, how big a role will grammar instruction play in your English language teaching? Analyzing Language and Developing Language Focus Stages Question 2. You are a teacher planning a Language Focus Stage to explicitly teach the grammar in each of the example sentences below. The grammar you should focus on is in parentheses. Include each step below for every example. 1. Assess language for level. - Which proficiency level (A1, A2, or B1 - defined in Module 2.6) would each sentence be most appropriate for? 2. Describe how you could establish a context to place the sentence in. Would you tell a story, show pictures, or plan a reading? Describe in detail. 3. Elicit the meaning of the grammar point – not the meaning of the sentence – from the students through clarifying questions. How will you know they really understand? 4. Review its form of the grammar point. Does it take on other forms or are there important exceptions students should know about, for example? 5. Review aspects of phonology of that grammar point. 6. Finally, how would you concept check the students’ understanding? Refer to the descriptions of the components of a language focus stage in a lesson (Section 10.5). It is acceptable to check a grammar reference book, if necessary, to understand the grammar. However, your work must use the model sentences given below and must be original. Example Sentences 1. You are going to meet a tall, mysterious stranger. (simple future, going to form, used for a prediction.) 2. Mary threw the ball to Jane. She threw the ball to her. (subject and object pronouns) 3. She´ll have finished by the time we arrive. (future perfect tense) Reflection on Language Awareness and the Meaning of Grammar Question 1. Write an essay that includes all of these elements: · Are you confident in your grammar skills? How did you learn grammar? Do you know a second language? If so, what did learning it teach you about language structure? · Were there any surprises that you encountered in this module? Could you answer the grammar assessment quiz questions correctly? Were you already familiar with most of the terms, such as noun, direct object, auxiliary verb, relative cl ause, and passive voice? If so, how will this knowledge support your teaching? If not, what are your plans to strengthen these areas? · What is your attitude toward grammar teaching? Is it stimulating, challenging, boring, or all part of the job? If you ha ve worked with students before, explain how they seemed to feel about learning grammar. From what you know now, how big a role will grammar instruction play in your English language teaching? Analyzing Language and Developing Language Focus Stages Question 2 . You are a teacher planning a Language Focus Stage to explicitly teach the grammar in each of the example sentences below. The grammar you should focus on is in parentheses. Include each step below for every example . 1. Assess language for level. - Which proficiency leve l (A1, A2, or B1 - defined in Module 2.6) would each sentence be most appropriate for? 2. Describe how you could establish a context to place the sentence in. Would you tell a story, show pictures, or plan a reading? Describe in detail. 3. Elicit the meaning of the grammar point – not the meaning of the sentence – from the students through clarifying questions. How will you know they really understand? 4. Review its form of the grammar point. Do es it take on other forms or are there important exceptions students should know about, for example? 5. Review aspects of phonology of that grammar point . 6. Finally, how would you concept check the students’ understanding? Refer to the descriptions o f the components of a language focus stage in a lesson (Section 10.5). It is acceptable to check a grammar reference book, if necessary, to understand the grammar. However, your work must use the model sentences given below and must be original. Example S entences 1 . You are going to meet a tall, mysterious stranger. (simple future, going to form, used for a prediction.) 2 . Mary threw the ball to Jane. She threw the ball to her. (subject and object pronouns) 3 . She´ll have finished by the time we arrive. (future perfect tense) Reflection on Language Awareness and the Meaning of Grammar Question 1. Write an essay that includes all of these elements: Are you confident in your grammar skills? How did you learn grammar? Do you know a second language? If so, what did learning it teach you about language structure? Were there any surprises that you encountered in this module? Could you answer the grammar assessment quiz questions correctly? Were you already familiar with most of the terms, such as noun, direct object, auxiliary verb, relative clause, and passive voice? If so, how will this knowledge support your teaching? If not, what are your plans to strengthen these areas? What is your attitude toward grammar teaching? Is it stimulating, challenging, boring, or all part of the job? If you have worked with students before, explain how they seemed to feel about learning grammar. From what you know now, how big a role will grammar instruction play in your English language teaching? Analyzing Language and Developing Language Focus Stages Question 2. You are a teacher planning a Language Focus Stage to explicitly teach the grammar in each of the example sentences below. The grammar you should focus on is in parentheses. Include each step below for every example. 1. Assess language for level. - Which proficiency level (A1, A2, or B1 - defined in Module 2.6) would each sentence be most appropriate for? 2. Describe how you could establish a context to place the sentence in. Would you tell a story, show pictures, or plan a reading? Describe in detail. 3. Elicit the meaning of the grammar point – not the meaning of the sentence – from the students through clarifying questions. How will you know they really understand? 4. Review its form of the grammar point. Does it take on other forms or are there important exceptions students should know about, for example? 5. Review aspects of phonology of that grammar point. 6. Finally, how would you concept check the students’ understanding? Refer to the descriptions of the components of a language focus stage in a lesson (Section 10.5). It is acceptable to check a grammar reference book, if necessary, to understand the grammar. However, your work must use the model sentences given below and must be original. Example Sentences 1. You are going to meet a tall, mysterious stranger. (simple future, going to form, used for a prediction.) 2. Mary threw the ball to Jane. She threw the ball to her. (subject and object pronouns) 3. She´ll have finished by the time we arrive. (future perfect tense) 2.6 Levels in a Class What do we mean when we label a learner in our program as an "intermediate" English speaker? For the term intermediate to have meaning, it must relate to certain agreed upon standards. The most widely used system of language levels in the world is called the Common European Framework (CEF). The Council of Europe has developed a six-level framework that is designed to assist communication regarding many languages. Each of the six can be divided in half to provide twelve levels that give an informed user of this framework a relatively clear idea of the user's competency. Unfortunately, in the United States and in some other countries, use of the CEF is uncommon. Some schools group students on the basis of the particular proficiency test that they use. For example, the IELTS English proficiency exam (International English Language Testing System) contains nine levels; students in a particular English program might be grouped by IELTS scores. Many language schools develop their own systems of levels based on the type of students they most frequently encounter. For example, if 80% of a school’s 100 students were in CEF’s Level A2 or B1, the school might create eight different classes at those two levels. Terminology can vary, too, with one school describing a class as advanced beginner while another uses the term elementary. Our best advice is to study the CEF levels, find out about the system that is in place at your school, learn what you can about the proficiency tests your school uses, and stay flexible. Keep in mind that there is also wide variation between many students’ levels in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It is quite common for students who have been taught to excel on multiple-choice written exams to be very poor speakers. Other people who have spent time with English speakers can sometimes speak and listen well but have low reading